PR Viking and PR Viking Alternatives

At a Glance

Designer Peter Rempel turns digital lead into gold with two packed font sets of Nordic-styled characters.

Planning on inviting the horde over for poker? Type like a
Viking (or at least like Canadian font designer Peter Rempel). Send
a hearty "hail thee" with font PR Viking and its brother,
symbol set PR Viking Alternatives.

Rempel's Nordic bad boys contain a crew of over 200
TrueType characters ready to ransack the first page they land on
even as they cast a spell over it. The main set includes accents,
diacritics, full punctuation, and all the numerals you need to
total up and divide the pillage. Instead of a lowercase there are
alternative capitals. For instance, type cap O for one version and
lowercase o for its decorative second.

A hint of pagan can be found in the accompanying symbol set.
With PR Viking Alternatives, an industrious warrior can cast a
heavenly horoscope or seduce the earthly elements, then switch to
PR Viking and charge by the Yen, thanks to the full range of
international monetary signs.

Rempel learned his letterforms early on by poring over the
Speedball Lettering textbook. A membership in the
Calligrapher's Guild of Manitoba followed, but the designer
didn't stop at twentieth century penmanship. He was on a
crusade to bring the letterforms of the Middle Ages--alchemical
symbols and all--into the computer age. The typeface has a ragged,
hammered feel created by rasterizing the outlines. It's best used
at 36 points and above to really appreciate the details.

An undertaking this grand is bound to encounter problems. The
main ampersand is an odd combination of two forms and the O's
could stand to gain in girth to match the other characters. A lack
of lowercase forms limits the download's sensitive side. No
whispering over ale in the Great Hall; it's all shouting with
this boisterous crew.

Typographer Rempel is forever minding his Ps, Qs and even Os,
which is why he's recently updated the PR Vikings. The designer has
replaced the font's question mark placeholder with a proper mark.
He has also made the O's a little bigger which was a pet peeve of
ours.

A quick caution regarding PR Viking Alternatives: a handful of
symbols occupy more than one position on the keyboard, causing
minor frustration. However, the copyright sign appears only once in
the main set and that's how it should bea subtle message
not to go commercial with your PR Viking creations unless you have
the designer's permission.

Note: To use this font, unzip the folder and
install the .ttf file in the folder C:\Windows\Fonts. Note that the
font won't appear in your applications until you close and re-open
them.